


Why Don't You and I Combine?

by Nicnac



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, Family, Fluff and Angst, Genderqueer Crowley (Good Omens), Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Other, Romance, The Author Regrets Everything, the author apologizes for nothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-11-22 13:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicnac/pseuds/Nicnac
Summary: Adam Fell of London and Warlock Crowley of Napa coincidentally end up attending the same summer camp in Maine. By chance, the two of them both end up having to stay in the isolation cabin together. Remarkably, Adam has grown up without a mother and Warlock has grown up without a father. And as a further crazy random happenstance, the two of them share the exact same birthday. (Parent Trap AU. It's a Parent Trap AU)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this may as well happen.
> 
> CW for mentions of transphobia, homo/biphobia, and also Gabriel just being generally slimy, all of which should be confined to this chapter.

Ezra stopped mid-step, his foot only hitting the ground through the auspices of gravity and not by any effort of his own.

The QE2 – Queen Elizabeth II – assigned tables for the dining room by cabin. As Ezra was in his cabin alone and furthermore on this trip alone, he had been expecting to be seated at a table full of strangers. He had not been expecting to be seated with what was possibly the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen in his life. She had on a slinky black dress that accentuated her long lean body, and a riot of scarlet curls cascaded down her back and over her shoulder. She wore a pair of sunglasses, indoors and at night, and yet somehow managed to make them appear a glamourous fashion statement.

Ezra became painfully aware of his own outfit. The trousers and shirt were probably fine, but he knew the velvet waistcoat and tartan bow tie tended to make him look old fashioned and dowdy; not the most attractive traits in anyone, much less someone just scooting past his mid-twenties. Normally he didn’t mind – he liked his sense of style – but these were hardly normal circumstances. On the plus side, this outfit also tended to make him look rather gay. He found that term far too limiting a label for himself in most cases, but it this particular case it meant that when he inevitably made a tit of himself, the gorgeous red-head would assume it was because he was just generally a tit, and not because he was already hopelessly infatuated with her. The former seemed less embarrassing somehow.

He forced himself forward and took a seat at the table next to her. “Hello,” he said, which as opening lines went he supposed was fairly middle of the road.

She reached one finely manicured finger up to tilt her sunglasses downward, revealing gorgeous amber eyes. She looked Ezra up and down with amusement, but also he thought appraisal. And not necessarily negative appraisal either. “Hello,” she said. “A. Julia Crowley, though I go by Crowley.” She offered him her hand.

“Ezra Fell,” he replied. “Pleasure to meet you.” And then, tit that he was, he took her hand and rather than shaking it he pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles.

Slowly, her lips curled up into a smile.

* * *

Crowley gazed at the sleeping Ezra - the beautiful halo of his white-blonde hair, the way his lashes fanned over his delightfully round cheeks, the smear of lipstick by his left ear he’d missed wiping off the night before - and thrice-damned herself for a fool. He was just so charming and clever and sweet with a biting sarcastic edge and so attractive – handsome and soft in just the perfect amounts – that she’d forgotten her single solitary rule. If there was a chance it was going to be more than a one night stand, always tell them first.

This was a purely practical consideration. Because if they were going to turn out to be the type of person that accused her of being a disgusting temptress that had tricked them or any foul nonsense like that, then they tended to be more violent – metaphorically and in one case that very, very quickly learned the error of his ways, literally – if she waited until after sex to tell them. Besides, if she told them and got that reaction first, it meant she avoided the slimy feeling of knowing she’d slept with someone like that.

Ezra wouldn’t be violent about it, she was sure. She hadn’t known him for longer than an evening, but that just didn’t seem in his nature. He might still be disgusted though. In fact, it seemed almost inevitable that he would be, given how Crowley’s luck worked.

Ezra’s eyes opened. He was smiling at first, but the expression dropped almost immediately. “Was I that bad last night?” he asked.

“No! No, of course not,” she said. If anything that was the exact opposite of the problem. “I need to tell you something.”

“You’re already seeing someone,” Ezra guessed with a resigned acceptance.

“No, that’s not –“ She sighed and turned away. “I’m not always a woman, alright?”

“What else are you then?” Ezra asked.

Maybe because she had been waiting for him to be disgusted, she heard a mocking tone in his voice. “What else do you think I am, an aardvark?”

“I confess aardvark wouldn’t have been my first instinct in regards to what kind of animal you’d be. Given your tattoo, I probably would have said snake. A cat maybe. But actually, I assumed you meant something along the lines of sometimes you’re a woman and sometimes you’re a man, or something in between the two, or agender entirely.”

She looked back at him. He didn’t look mocking in the slightest. He looked patient, curious, and interested yet unconcerned. “Man or woman. I tend to oscillate between being mostly one or the other. More often a man, but more woman overall,” Crowley said slowly. “You… you don’t mind?”

Ezra gave a confused head tilt. “Why would I mind? You are a magnificent creature. Man or woman doesn’t change that. Besides,” he gave her a very charming smile, “I’m sure you’d look absolutely smashing in a suit.”

Crowley lunged at him, straddling his waist and pinning him to the bed. She devoured his mouth with a deep, hungry kiss.

“So last night was alright then?” he asked cheekily when she released the kiss for air. His lips were already beginning to look red and swollen again.

“Last night was bloody perfect,” she said. “You’re perfect, and you’ll be very lucky if I let you out of this room anytime over the rest of the trip.”

“To the contrary, my dear.” Ezra reached up and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “I shall consider myself very lucky if you don’t.”

* * *

Ezra felt a distinct pang of loss as he pulled his coat from the closet where it was nestled among Crowley’s clothes and placed it in his suitcase. She had brought her things over to his cabin on the third day of the voyage, and while they hadn’t spent all their time in his room – not even the majority of it really, if one discounted sleeping – neither of them had been long out of each other’s sight since then. And now it was nearly over. 

They hadn’t talked about what they were doing next. That was, they had each talked about their individual plans – Ezra working toward opening his shop for rare and antique books and services, and Crowley sorting out her parents’ estate with the hopes of ending up with enough inheritance to get her started toward owning her own vineyard – but they hadn’t talked about any plans together. Realistically, they probably couldn’t have any future plans together for the long term, not if Crowley wanted her vineyard in Napa and Ezra wanted his bookshop in… well, really he could own a bookshop most anywhere, couldn’t he? Just because he’d always envisioned London didn’t mean he had to settle there if another opportunity presented itself. If. 

Ezra glanced over at Crowley. She was still lounging in bed, watching him pack with an air of casual indifference. But he thought he could see something just a little too careful, too studied, about her indifference. 

“You know what I realized, my dear?” Ezra said with some studied casualness of his own. “We never did get around to getting those oysters for you to try.”

“No we didn’t,” Crowley drawled. “Too bad.”

“Well. Well, I was thinking…” Ezra looked down at his suitcase. His nervous hands were doing a much better job of making a general mess of things than anything that could be called packing. “There’s this lovely restaurant near my flat that does remarkable things to oysters. We could go sometime if you like.” 

An abrupt sound from the bed made Ezra look over. Crowley was sitting up now, the blanket thrown haphazardly about her waist, her pyjama top falling off one shoulder, and her hair had formed a fluffy snarl on the left side of her head. Ezra didn’t know if she’d ever looked more attractive. “Yes. When? Yes,” she said, her words stumbling over each other in their haste to get out. 

Ezra wouldn’t have been able to help the grin that spread across his face, and he didn’t bother to try. “Tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night,” she agreed. She straightened her top and made some attempt to finger comb her hair. “Can’t wait, angel.”

His smile miraculously grew. “Me either,” he said, and he began humming while he packed. 

* * *

The words stuck in Crowley’s throat, unable to force their way past the lump there. She’d been standing in Ezra’s doorway mute and near tears for going on two minutes now, and he was beginning to panic. She gave up on words and instead reached into her purse and pulled out the stick in there. Ezra took it and read it almost automatically, though she doubted he needed to read it to know what it said. 

“Oh dear,” he said. “You… you’d better come in.” He gently placed a hand on her back, led her into the flat, and sat her down on the sofa. She waited there staring at nothing while he bustled about in the kitchen. A few minutes later he returned, handing her a mug of tea before sitting down next to her with his own mug.

Crowley took a sip and made a face when the flavor wasn’t what she had been expecting. “Sorry. That’s the only herbal tea I have on hand,” Ezra said. “I thought it best to avoid caffeine, just in case. That is, I know those tests aren’t always entirely accurate, but-“

“I’ve got four more at home, all positive,” she interrupted. “It’s probably safe to say it’s accurate.” She took another sip of the not-right-tasting tea, then set the mug down on the coffee table.

“Right,” Ezra said. “I think this is the part where I say I support whatever decision you want to make, whether it’s to keep them or, well…”

“They’re a _baby_. You can’t kill kids,” she snapped. Part of her knew that whatever was growing inside her was probably nothing more than a blob of undifferentiated cells at the moment, but she didn’t care. Because she could see them in her mind, a beautiful little baby with round cheeks and a bright smile and white-blonde curls and amber eyes. They were a little piece of her and a little piece of Ezra mixed together, and she already loved them so much.

“Good. Alright. So we’re keeping the baby,” Ezra said. He sounded faint.

“I’m sorry, angel; I’m so sorry,” Crowley said, the words rushing out of her. “I know this isn’t what we planned, it’s too much, it’s too fast, and-“

“Marry me.”

She let out a strangled noise and pushed herself back into the far corner of the sofa. She refused to look at him, to see the dutifulness and resignation there. “No! I can’t let – you can’t – you’re not obligated to –“

“Crowley, love. Please look at me.” She froze. Love. He’d called her _love_. They hadn’t… she let her eyes drift upward. Ezra was smiling at her. He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat to pull out a ring. A golden ouroboros, with rubies for eyes. Her beautiful, soft, sweet, charming bastard of an angel. “I got this the day we landed in London. I know this is sudden, and probably quite reckless, but you are the most amazing, impossible person I have ever met, and I love you. I don’t want to pressure you if you’re not ready, but –“

“Angel, if you don’t put that ring on my finger in the next five seconds, I’ll….” Wait longer, probably. She’d wait five seconds, five minutes, five years, ten years, a hundred, a thousand, six thousand. Crowley would wait from the very beginning of the world to the very end if she had to. But that didn’t make an especially good threat, so she left the words hanging.

Luckily, a threat wasn’t necessary, as Ezra immediately slid the ring onto her left hand. “Marry me, love?”

“Of course I’ll marry you, you stupid-“ He kissed her. Crowley wrapped her arms around him and was blissfully and incandescently happy.

* * *

“Mother would have wanted you to get married in a church,” Michael said.

Ezra frowned at his older sister. “I think what Mother would have wanted was for me to be happy.” Being very much the baby of the family, Ezra had only been six when their mother died, and had thereafter been raised by Michael and their brother Gabriel. Raised might have been a strong word for it, given their very hands-off parenting style, but Ezra had long since decided that was understandable under the circumstances. The point being, he didn’t remember their mother nearly as well as his siblings did, but what he did remember of her was composed entirely of love and warmth and acceptance.

“Of course she would have wanted you to be happy,” Michael said with a roll of her eyes. “But Mother also would have wanted you to get married in a church.”

As Mother was gone and Crowley was here and the one getting married, Ezra thought Mother’s hypothetical church wedding desires were largely irrelevant. He didn’t say that to Michael though. It didn’t seem worth the argument.

* * *

“Oh what’s this?” The ultrasound tech said, and Crowley immediately began panicking. She’d done something wrong and the baby was hurt, the baby was _dying_, the baby – “A second heartbeat! You both are having twins.”

“Twins,” Crowley breathed, and it was like every part of her sighed in satisfaction. The little baby in her mind was joined by a second near-identical one. They were having twins. That was, Crowley abruptly realized, exactly what she wanted. “That’s one for each of us,” she said to Ezra.

“One for each of us?” he echoed looking confused and a bit alarmed by the statement.

She rolled her eyes at him. “To name, angel. One for each of us to name.”

* * *

The wedding was far from perfect. There were too many compromises they’d had to make, compromises in the name of time, in the name of expense, in deference to Crowley’s pregnant state, in the name of mollifying Ezra’s family. Crowley’s solitary bridesmaid was a cousin she hadn’t spoken to in years even before she’d moved to America and had only been selected to block Michael’s dutiful volunteering to take the spot when Ezra had explained Gabriel couldn’t be his best man as they hadn’t planned on having bridesmaids and groomsmen. Aziraphale wasn’t wearing a tuxedo, as they hadn’t wanted to spend the money to buy one and Crowley had insisted he couldn’t rent one for his own wedding, and so was instead wearing the outfit he’d had on the night they’d first met. It was romantic and clashed horribly with the colour scheme. Their outdoor garden venue had been rained on, so they had to hastily relocate to the back-up indoor option which left a lot to be desired. In many respects, the wedding was a mess.

But Crowley, Crowley was perfect. Crowley with her stunning red hair half pinned up and the rest spilling down her back and shoulders. Crowley with her exquisite custom-tailored – the one expense Ezra had refused to spare – crimson dress, embellished with beaded and embroidered black snakes. Crowley with her magnificently swelling pregnant belly, though the detailing of the dress did a wonderful job of tricking your eye from noticing. Crowley with her sensible and comfortable sparkling black trainers. Crowley. Beautiful, impossible, perfect Crowley who was looking at Ezra like she thought he was perfect too.

* * *

Crowley sank down into her chair, more grateful for the footstool they’d tucked under the head table for her than she had possibly ever been for anything in her entire life. She was seriously questioning their decision to rush this wedding through before she gave birth. At the time it had made sense to try to get it done when they didn’t have two babies to contend with, but what she hadn’t considered was she still had two babies to contend with regardless. It was just that now they were stuck inside her, rather than physically separate and able to be handed off to someone else for a while.

“Feeling a bit worn out there?”

Crowley offered Gabriel a thin smile. It was a polite enough question, but something about the way he’d asked it felt smarmy and judgmental. “Yeah, a bit.”

“Understandable, what with…” He looked pointedly down at her stomach. “Anyway, I just wanted to stop over here and let you know how glad we are that Ezra married you, given everything.”

“Everything,” Crowley echoed. She also looked pointedly down at her stomach.

Gabriel laughed. “Well obviously we’re glad he doesn’t have any bastard children running around too. But no, I was talking about how Ezra is gay or bisexual or whatever it’s called.”

“He’s pansexual, actually,” Crowley gritted out.

“See what I mean? Always coming up with ridiculous new words, these people. I don’t know how they expect anyone to keep track. The point is, we’re glad he finally had the sense to settle down with a woman. A _real_ woman.”

If Crowley’s feet weren’t so swollen, she would stand up and punch him square in the face. She seriously considering making a go at it anyway when Ezra rushed up. “Gabriel! Sandalphon was looking for you.”

“Really Ezra,” Gabriel said, giving Ezra a condescending clap on the shoulder. “If you want sometime alone with your lovely wife, all you had to do was say so.” He winked at them and strode off. Smug wanker.

* * *

It was unfair the way Crowley kept getting more attractive, and without even trying. That was, without trying to be attractive; her sweat-soaked hair and the way she was passed out in exhaustion proved how very hard she’d been trying over the past twelve hours. “I love you,” Ezra said, and he pressed a kiss to the side of her heard.

“Mmmm, angel?” she said, her eyes fluttering open.

“I’m here, darling,” he answered.

“Babies?”

“They’re here too.”

Crowley blinked, looking surprised to find two new-borns cradled to her chest. She smiled softly at the pair of them. “They’re perfect.”

“Yes they are,” Ezra agreed, stroking a tiny cheek. “You did a marvellous job, my dear.”

“Course I did,” Crowley agreed. “But it’s your turn next time.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. Look, I already knocked out the first two for us. More than my fair share of childbirth. So the next one’s your turn.”

Ezra huffed out a laugh. “I don’t think it works that way.”

“Eh, you’re clever, angel; you’ll figure it out,” Crowley said.

“Of course, love. Anything you want.”

* * *

“What do you want from me, Crowley?” Ezra said. The distress was palpable in his tone, but for once Crowley didn’t care. She forced herself not to care.

“What I want,” she said as she continued shoving things haphazardly into her suitcase, “is for you to stand up for me.”

“I do!” Ezra protested.

“No, you redirect the conversation. It’s not the same thing.”

“Yes, well maybe most of the time… but I stand up for you too,” he said.

“Not enough,” said Crowley. She snatched her hairdryer and began trying to stuff it into the already packed suitcase.

“I’m sorry. But you don’t know how Gabriel and Michael can be – they’re close-minded and stubborn and –“

“I don’t give a fuck how they can be,” Crowley said. “They can either support us, or they can fuck off.”

“Yes, but…” he sounded sad and lost, and she _did not care_. “They’re my family.”

Crowley snarled and chucked the hairdryer at him. It nearly hit him in the head. She decided she didn’t care about that either. She zipped her suitcase up and stalked off to the baby’s room.

“Crowley!” Ezra said, truly panicked now.

She had been planning to… but she couldn’t. She couldn’t do that to him. She picked Adam up. She placed a kiss on his forehead and breathed him in. Then she set him back down. She picked up Warlock instead. “I’m going back to America, angel. I’m buying a plane ticket and leaving. And when I’m off on my vineyard, I won’t even think about you.”

She made it as far as opening the front door before Ezra caught up with her. “You can’t leave, Crowley!” he said. He had picked up Adam and was holding the baby like he was the only thing keeping him from falling apart. There were tears in his eyes and she mentally begged him to say something, anything. Just give her a reason, any reason, any stupid excuse, to stay.

He didn’t say a word. “Have a nice life,” Crowley said, and she slammed the door behind her.

* * *

“You know what, Gabriel? Fuck off,” Ezra said, slamming the phone down.

In the next room, Adam began crying. “Oh no, my dear boy, I’m so sorry,” Ezra said as he hurried into the room and picked Adam up. He gently rocked the baby and placed a kiss on his head as he made soft reassuring noises. Adam didn’t stop crying. It seemed like he’d been crying near constantly for the past month. Ezra could sympathize with the feeling.

“Shhhh, it’s alright. Your mother and brother will be…” Ezra choked on the words. He’d offered the reassurance hundreds of times of the past weeks, but he couldn’t force it out anymore. He couldn’t force himself to believe it was true anymore.

Ezra clenched his eyelids shut, trying to hold back the tears. He could hear Crowley echoing in his head _one for each of us_. “I don’t think they’re coming back,” he whispered against Adam’s forehead. “I’m sorry; it’s my fault. I should have… But you’ll be alright. I’ll take care of you, and we’ll figure it out. I promise.”

* * *

Anthony J. Crowley stood with one hand in the pocket of his jeans and the other holding a baby carrier. A breeze gusted through, rustling the leaves of the grape vines and tousling his freshly shorn hair. Taking in the sight of his new home, Crowley felt smaller than he ought to. Like a piece of himself was missing. Be honest. Two pieces and while they were out of reach, they weren’t missing; he knew exactly where they were.

He pushed the feeling away. He’d sat in that flat in Mayfair for six weeks waiting, and Ezra had never come for him. He’d made his choice, and it was time for Crowley to move on.

He smiled down at Warlock. Warlock looked solemnly and trustingly back. “Alright hellspawn. Let’s do this.”


	2. Chapter 2

Adam was the last member of his cabin to arrive, and so was left with the bunk in the back corner of the room by default. Which was just fine, because it was the bunk he would have chosen anyway, Adam assured himself. He threw his suitcase down on his bed, and tried to decide if he wanted to unpack like two of his cabin mates were doing or if he wanted to live out of his bag like it looked like the other one was planning on doing. It was as he was considering this that he noticed something odd.

“Excuse me,” Adam said to the person who had taken the bunk next to his. “Are you a girl?” As soon as he asked the question, he could hear his dad’s voice in his head, telling him that was a rude question and a rude way to ask it and he sounded like his Uncle Gabriel.

Adam had only ever talked to Uncle Gabriel the one time. He stopped by the bookshop once a year every year to try to convince Adam’s dad to come back to the family – which his dad assured him meant their biological family, but Adam always thought Uncle Gabriel could be a part of the mob and he was sure his dad wouldn’t tell him if he was, so Adam hadn’t completely ruled it out. It didn’t matter that much anyway, since Dad always kicked Uncle Gabriel out straight away. The only reason Adam ever talked to him was Uncle Gabriel had stopped by about a month earlier than he usually did that year while Adam’s dad was in the back working on the book repair. Adam had been stuck with Uncle Gabriel for a full six minutes until Newt got back with their lunch and Adam was able to run to get his dad without having to leave Uncle Gabriel unsupervised in the shop. Dad had told Uncle Gabriel to fuck off, sounding really angry and dangerous when he said it for once instead of just tired, and Uncle Gabriel had left. He’d started making his annual visits on school days instead of the weekends after that, so it had been the last time Adam had ever seen him. It had still been more than enough to impress Adam with how terrible it was to sound like Uncle Gabriel.

“Sorry. But, er… are you?” Because he did still want to know. He was a bit confused was all.

“Yes,” she said, and she didn’t look offended, so Adam supposed that was alright then.

“Her name’s Pepper,” said the boy on the bed on the other side of her. “I’m Brian and that’s Wensley.”

“Wensley_dale_, actually,” said Wensley.

“Adam,” he said before turning to look at Pepper again. “But Camp Walden is a _boy’s_ camp.”

“That’s sexist,” Pepper retorted. “Camp Walden is one of the best summer camps in the country. Maybe even in the whole world, since you came here all the way from London.”

“You don’t know I came from London. I could be from Oxford or Birmingham or Tadfield or… well, okay yes, I did come from London. But you didn’t know that,” Adam said.

“Why did you come all the way here from London anyway?” Wensley asked.

“My mother lives in America,” Adam said. He left off the part where he’d never actually met his mother and she had no idea he was here.

“Are you visiting here while you’re here then?” said Pepper.

Adam shrugged. He knew that technically America was a really big country – though he thought his Dad must have been taking the mick at least a little bit, because one country couldn’t possibly be as big as all of Europe – and his mother probably lived on the other side of it. All that meant the odds of him just coincidentally running into her at some point while he was in America were pretty low. On the other hand, if this were a book, he’d definitely run into her and she’d tell him how much she’d missed him and loved him and come back to England with him, and she and Dad would get back together, and they’d live happily ever after. And if it could happen in a book, Adam couldn’t see any reason why it couldn’t happen in real life.

He wasn’t ready to explain all that to his cabin mates yet, so instead he added, “Plus I heard in America they have ice cream shops with 39 different flavours of ice cream.” They had ice cream shops with that many different flavours in London too, Adam had counted, but it that was something one of the kids that lived down the lane from their cottage in Tadfield had said to him once. He thought it sounded like the kind of thing that would make him sound properly British and interesting to a bunch of Americans without sounding too British.

“It’s only 31 different flavours,” Brian said. “They’ve even got a 31 in the logo.”

“Yeah, at that specific ice cream store,” said Pepper. “But I bet there are tons of other stores that have way more than that. More than 39 even.”

“Well, we’re not that far from town are we?” Adam asked. “We should sneak out one day and go to all the ice cream shops and count and see which has the most.” This was all around agreed to be an excellent idea, and the four of them set about planning how they would accomplish it. They spent the remainder of the afternoon discussing what they wanted to do during their next eight weeks, most of them being official Camp Walden activities and some of them decidedly not. By the time lights out had rolled around, all four of them were fast friends with Adam as the unofficial leader of the group. This suited Adam perfectly well.

The trouble started the next morning at breakfast. By the time Adam and Brian had arrived not-technically-late at the mess hall, most of the other kids were already there and they were all talking about something. Something big and interesting had happened, and Adam had not been a part of it. _This_ did not suit him well at all.

Adam didn’t need to be at the centre of attention. He was perfectly alright with everyone going along and paying attention to whatever they were interested it. It was just that if someone was going to be the centre of attention, he preferred it to be him. At the very least he liked to be next to the centre. Like at dinner last night, when everyone had been talking about Pepper, the only girl in camp and Adam’s good friend. But they weren’t talking about her this morning. Adam could tell because she and Wensley had already gotten a table off on one side of the room, and no one was staring at them or anything.

“What’s going on?” Adam asked as he and Brian joined the other two.

“Boys being stupid,” Pepper said. She rolled her eyes and went back to her breakfast. Adam looked at Wensley.

“You know that kid Johnson? I guess someone dared him last night or something, and he jumped into the lake, completely naked,” said Wensley.

“Oh,” Adam said. That was a pretty good dare, he guessed, but it wasn’t that interesting. “Johnson does look kind of greasy; he could probably use a bath.”

“Thar’s not even all of it,” Wensley said. “Apparently while Johnson was in the lake, the person who dared him took all his clothes, so he had to walk all the back to his cabin completely naked too.”

That was a little impressive, actually. Kind of funny too. “Do you know who did it?” Adam asked.

“Probably him,” Pepper said, pointing at the door to the mess hall.

Adam turned to look and saw another boy being marched in by one of the camp counsellors. He used his hand on his shoulder to walk the boy over to a tiny little table in the corner no one was sat at because of the sign hanging off the side reading “Isolation Table.” The counsellor pushed the boy down into one of the chairs. “Stay there,” he said. Everyone else had gone quiet, so even from the opposite side of the room Adam could hear him. “I’ll go get your breakfast, and we can discuss your punishment more afterwards.”

“I’m allergic to strawberries,” the boy yelled after the counsellor as he walked around the corner to the food line. As soon as he had disappeared, everyone burst into conversation again.

“You know,” Brian said thoughtfully, “he kind of looks like you, Adam.”

“He does not,” Adam protested, feeling offended without knowing why and oddly possessive of his own strawberry allergy.

“He does a little. You have the same colour hair,” Brian insisted.

“They both have brown hair. Lots of people have brown hair. All four of us have brown hair,” Pepper said.

“Yes, but they’re different coloured browns. Adam’s and his are the same colour brown,” Brian insisted.

“So is Wensley’s,” Pepper said.

“Actually, I think Brian is right,” said Wensley. “I mean, the two of you obviously aren’t identical or anything, but you do look a little alike. Even besides just the hair.”

“No we don’t,” Adam bit out. And that was the end of it.

Well, it was the end of talking about whether Adam and Dare Kid – Adam refused to learn his name – looked alike. It wasn’t really the end of Adam thinking about Dare Kid. Adam was feeling very upstaged at the moment. Again, not that he needed to be the centre of attention or had been planning on it, but… But on the very first day, while the rest of them had still been busy unpacking and figuring out where everything was, Dare Kid had been pulling off a prank that had gotten everyone talking about him. It wasn’t fair.

The only thing for it, Adam decided, was to pull off his own prank, better than the one Dare Kid had done. And Adam wouldn’t get caught at it either. Thinking about Dare Kid’s prank the main flaw in it, aside from having got caught, was that no one had actually seen anything. Sure, people were talking about how embarrassing it was for Greasy Johnson, but hardly anyone had seen him being embarrassed. So to make his better, Adam would have to make sure there was plenty of proof of his prank out where everyone could see it.

It was easy to figure out after that. Three nights after Dare Kid’s prank, Adam snuck into Greasy Johnson’s cabin and stole every single pair of his pants. Then he took them and strung them up on the flag pole all in a row. There weren’t enough of them to make it down the length of the pole, but there were honestly more pairs than Adam had expected.

The next morning Adam stopped by the flag pole on his way to breakfast to admire his handiwork. There were already a bunch of other kids gathered around, and Adam felt a surge of pride. Now this was a well-done prank.

“Hey Adam,” said Billy, one of the kids from a different cabin. He waved up at the flag pole. “Greasy Johnson must have really made him mad, huh?”

“What?” Adam said.

“You know that one kid, the one with the funny name. A few days ago he dared Greasy Johnson to jump into the lake naked, and now he’s hung up all his underwear up on the flag pole,” Billy said.

Adam stormed off after that, ignoring Billy calling after him.

His mistake was pulling a prank that was too similar to what Dare Kid had done. Of course people were going to think he’d done it, especially with the way Dare Kid kept going around saying he hadn’t. What Adam needed to come up with was something really different, and to be safe it had to be something that couldn’t be done by just one person. His cabin mates agreed to help, and they picked out one of the boys who was a jerk anyway. Then during a day when there weren’t any especially fun camp activities going on, they went into his cabin and stole the furniture. Adam wanted to put it all on the roof, but they couldn’t figure out how to manage that, so they just set it up out in front of his cabin instead. Pepper even volunteered her teddy bear to put on top of the bed to make it extra embarrassing for him. She said she didn’t care about the bear and her mom had just packed it for her, but Adam made sure to sneak it back after everything was all done, just in case.

The furniture prank wasn’t as funny as the pants prank – it would have been funnier if they could have gotten it on the roof – but it was more impressive. Way too impressive for anyone to believe Dare Kid had done it. Adam was prepared for some of the other kids to suggest he’d done it this time, but after a few minutes someone was bound to point out that Dare Kid was by himself basically all the time, and no way he could have pulled it off alone. Then eventually someone else would look at Adam and ask who he thought did it. Adam would shrug and say, “I don’t know” in just the right way to make everyone realize he was the one who’d done it. That would show Dare Kid.

Except no one ever pointed out it would have been impossible for Dare Kid. They all just went around being more impressed with him for pulling such a big prank off all by himself. And Dare Kid made sure everyone believed it again by insisting he hadn’t done it. The whole thing was starting to drive Adam mad.

One last prank, a really big one, and he’d pull it on Dare Kid’s friends so no one would think Dare Kid had done it. If Adam could figure out who Dare Kid’s friends were. Because during mealtimes he ate at the Isolation Table alone and during off hours he was up in the Isolation Cabin alone. He did get to hang out with everyone during camp activity hours, but most of the time he was still off by himself, too cool for the rest of them. Finally Adam decided the kids from Dare Kid’s old cabin were basically his friends. Close enough anyway. He could prank all of them, and this time no way would Dare Kid get to steal the credit.

And oh, what a prank it was. Adam, Pepper, Brian, and Wensley snuck over to the other cabin as soon as it was late enough to be sure everyone was asleep, and they spent the entire rest of the night setting it all up. They crisscrossed strings all over the room. They coated the floor with patches of vegetable oil and patches of honey. They covered the other kids with shaving cream and even more honey. They rigged a trap next to one of the beds so when the boy stood up it would drop water balloons on his head. And another trap by a patch of vegetable oil so that when someone slipped and tried to steady themselves by grabbing onto a balled up shirt tied up in one of the strings, it would tug the cord to turn the fan on, sending feathers falling down everywhere. It was truly a masterpiece.

So it was a shame about the head of the camp showing up for a surprise inspection and ending up with chocolate sauce dumped all over him. Though not as much a shame as it was that all four of them had wanted to watch the prank unfold and so were right there when it happened.

“It’s not their fault; it was all my idea,” Adam said as soon as it became clear they were not getting out of this one.

“Trust me, I know, Fell,” Marvin said. A fat glob of chocolate syrup rolled down his forehead and dripped off the tip of his nose. “And I’m sure you were behind those other pranks these past two weeks as well. But that doesn’t excuse your friends for going along with it. All four of you will be cleaning up this mess, and then you three are restricted from any activities for the next three days. As for you Fell…”

Adam pasted on his best innocent expression. It probably wouldn’t work since he’d already admitted to having done it, but it probably couldn’t hurt. Marvin was clearly thinking something over, so maybe if Adam got lucky he’d think himself right out of getting Adam in trouble.

“Yeah, that’s probably the best solution,” Marvin said to himself. “It doesn’t seem to fair to keep Crowley completely isolated, and if the two of you are bad influences, at least it’ll only be on each other.” He nodded to himself, sending another fat drip of chocolate to the floor. “After you’re done here Fell, pack your bags. You’re moving to the Isolation cabin.”

* * *

When Adam got to the Isolation Cabin that afternoon, feeling gross and tired and annoyed, Dare Kid was sitting on one of the bunks with his mobile phone, probably playing a game on it or something. Not that Adam would know; he didn’t have a mobile and wasn’t allowed to get one until he was 13 or 15 or 18 or whenever he moved out and got one for himself because his dad was so old-fashioned he still had a flip phone.

Adam flung his suitcase on the empty bunk and jerked the zipper open.

“You’re Adam Fell, right?” Dare Kid asked. Adam grunted in agreement and didn’t turn around. “I’m Warlock Crowley.”

“I _know_,” Adam said. Of course he knew. Everyone was talking about him and how great his pranks were – pranks he didn’t even do, pranks _Adam_ had done. How could Adam not have heard his name by now?

“Marvin said you were being sent here because of a prank you pulled on the Navajo cabin, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was,” Warlock said.

“So?” Adam demanded, turning around.

Warlock had set his phone down on his lap and was looking over at Adam. “So, I thought it might be funny? Your other pranks were funny. Especially the one with Greasy Johnson’s underwear.” Adam glared at him. Warlock picked his phone back up and ducked his head down to look at it, his hair swinging in his face. “I thought they were anyway.”

“Is that why you told everyone you’d done them?” Adam said.

Warlock scoffed. “I told everyone I didn’t do them,” he said, not looking up from his phone. “It’s not my fault if they didn’t believe me.”

Adam glared at him some more. Warlock kept playing his game. He looked tense, and Adam realized maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he hadn’t been trying to be clever and trick people into believing he’d done the pranks at all. Maybe he really did think Adam’s pranks were funny and wanted to talk about them.

Adam definitely wanted to talk to someone about how funny his pranks were.

He plopped down on Warlock’s bed. Warlock jerked his head up from his phone. “Was Marvin still covered in chocolate sauce when he came up here?” Adam asked.

“Chocolate sauce?” Warlock said.

“Yep,” Adam said. “That’s how we got caught; Marvin showed up to give Navajo cabin a surprise inspection and got hit by the chocolate sauce trap part of it. It was a really great prank.”

He told Warlock all about it, and then all about how he and his friends had pulled the other two off as well. Warlock was a good listener. He didn’t outright laugh really, but he grinned a lot and complimented Adam on all the especially clever bits and came up with his own clever bits too. It was enough to make Adam wish he actually had been helping on the pranks.

“What about you?” Adam asked. “How’d you get Greasy Johnson to jump in the lake naked? Must’ve been pretty impressive to get you thrown in here just for that.”

“It wasn’t just that, even if that was part of it,” Warlock said. “I was playing poker with my cabin mates and I guess word got out because Greasy Johnson and his friends came to play too. On one hand the pot got big enough that Johnson was out of cash so he raised with a bet that whoever lost had to jump in the lake naked. He lost, but I guess he was mad about that, or mad that I stole his clothes because he ratted me out to the counsellors. And my cabin mates were mad because I won all their money of them in poker too, so they backed him up. Then when the counsellors were going through my stuff to confiscate all my winnings they found my athame and that’s when they told me I had to come here.”

“What’s an athame?” Adam asked.

“Ceremonial blade for witchcraft,” Warlock said.

“Wait, so your name’s not Warlock, you’re just actually a warlock?” Adam said. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. For all of a few seconds anyway, then he decided it was pretty cool.

“No, that really is my name. My neighbour who’s teaching me says that’s what mom gets for trying to be clever about my name. Course, my mom tells her that’s pretty rich from someone named Anathema.”

“We’ve got a shop assistant at my dad’s bookshop called Newt. That’d be a good name for a witch,” Adam said.

“A good one or a really bad one,” said Warlock and Adam nodded in agreement.

“By the way,” Warlock said. “Did Greasy Johnson ever apologize to Pepper? He was supposed to.”

“I don’t think so. When?”

“I shouted at him to do it when I was stealing his clothes,” Warlock said.

Adam thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. “I don’t remember him doing it, but we can go ask Pepper to be sure.” He hopped off the bed and walked toward the door.

“It’s against the rules for us to leave outside of mealtimes and official camp activities,” Warlock said.

Adam was deeply disappointed in him for a moment, until he turned around and saw that Warlock didn’t really mean it. He was just saying it to have said it, and was already getting up off the bed too. “My dad says I’m an intelligent enough young man to figure out why the rules are there, and if I can’t figure it out, then maybe they shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

“My mom just says screw the rules,” Warlock said.

“I think I’d like your mom,” said Adam.

“Yeah, probably,” Warlock said, stuffing his feet in his shoes. “C’mon, let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are sunshine on a cloudy day. Or come watch my flail over on [tumblr.](https://nicnacsnonsense.tumblr.com/)


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